Saturday, August 19, 2017

We're building on to our house, so it will now be a 1 1/2-story Craftsman instead of a 1-story Craftsman. I feel like it always wanted to be that way, and I've been imagining it and drawing it ever since we moved in almost twelve years ago. Of course it's insanely expensive, but only about half as much as it would be to build a new house of similar size and quality. I was lucky enough to find an architect and a builder who both understood my vision and how important it was to me to preserve the Craftsman identity of my house.

I know it's greedy of me to want a bigger house, and greedier still to spend the kind of money I'm spending to make sure it "looks right." I was conflicted about it for a long time. I might need that money to rehome refugees or hide people from the gestapo, and here I was, making a big old American house like the big old American woman that I am. But unsurprisingly I was able to get over that concern and build my big old house. Yay for self-justification! If hiding people becomes necessary we'll figure something out. As they say somewhere, probably England, cheer up, it may never happen.

In related news, the lawn and garden are thrashed, possibly beyond recovery. We had to put in a new septic system, the flower beds are all squished, my river birch is probably dead, and the lawn hasn't been watered since the beginning of July because there's always wood stacked on it. It's pretty grim, and it's going to be a monumental effort bringing it back. It's okay though, because bindweed has infiltrated the front garden and it's so hard to control that it's probably better just to start over.

I got an email that my trees have shipped--I ordered a bunch of trees that are hard to find around here. They come as little bare root sticks, and I'm just planting them for fun because they were super cheap. If I get a decent ginkgo--or even better, a katsura--out of this experiment, it will be well worth the $35 I spent.

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comments:

I am pleased to see that you are writing again. I share the emotions you describe in your previous post, and it is encouraging to know that you will keep on keeping on (I date myself, I fear) regardless of the direction in which we are heading. Because that is all we can do, and at least, we can examine the larger picture and try to figure out how our tiny part of it may affect the whole. I look forward to your future posts.